The Maine Legislature is failing. The expressions of frustration, from rank-and-file to committee chairmen, are the expected symptoms of a system that cannot balance the state budget because it will not face the truth:

Maine government is too big and expensive. The state spends more on services than it should — far more than its taxpayers can afford.

As a result, the budget shortfall — the gap between the cost of maintaining the excessive state bureaucracy and the public’s ability to pay for it — is bloated and stagnant, at up to $600 million for the next two years.

The Legislature is confused because it has lost sight of basic principles.

The level of government services should reflect the needs of the citizens of Maine and their ability to pay.

Today, this state fails on both counts.

The Legislature and the governor rejected the suggestions of the restructuring commission they formed to study the organization and efficiency of state government.

Legislative committees, despite reforms, still are too closely tied to the agencies they oversee. Committee machinery is set up to distribute money, not save it. Perhaps committees should exchange departments and agencies (Transportation Committee examines Human Services budget), in an effort to depersonalize the downsizing process.

Do the easy things first.

The state was privatizing its retail liquor business. The job is half done. There’s another $1 million to $2 million to go. What happened?

The state could save up to $5 million by extinguishing the Maine Turnpike Authority and rolling its functions into the Department of Transportation.

The last word on these issues came from MTA chief Paul Violette, who proposed building a new state liquor store on the turnpike. That’s moving backward.

The state spends at least $36 million every two years on substance-abuse programs scattered among half a dozen state agencies. Could Maine spend half as much ($16 million is from the General Fund), and adequately serve the public? Probably.

These are some of the “gimme” issues that the Legislature could deal with swiftly. It hasn’t. No surprise then that it can’t tame the welfare bureaucracy or the Department of Education.

In her comprehensive and provocative, “Dollars and Sense: Maine State Budgeting at a Crossroads,” Josephine M. LaPlante, director of the State and Local Finance Program at the University of Southern Maine, found that Maine ranked 10th in the country in the number of state government employees per 1,000 population, that it had added significantly (18 percent) to the number of state employees between 1984 and 1989, and that the modest decrease in state employment (3.8 percent) in 1991 had not appreciably changed Maine’s standing nationally, or among states of comparable size and resources.

In addition to creating unnecessary expense, this adds to retirement and Workers’ Compensation costs — the personnel overhead of state government.

University of Maine President Fred Hutchinson found similar circumstances before he downsized that campus, which was living on 1974 revenues (adjusted for inflation), but was supporting a number of programs, units and departments that had ballooned from 99 to 160.

Some members of Democratic legislative leadership, their followers and many Republicans, would extend the life of temporary taxes imposed during the previous budget failure, in 1991. But draining $260 million out of the Maine economy during 1994 and 1995 is not a solution. It feeds the problem.

The answer, from the beginning, is basic: Make government smaller.

State budgeting remains at the crossroads.